*This entry is lovingly dedicated to my friend, Ginger Hamilton (Caudill), who was a wonderful writer and story teller and who shared my sense of humor. She is so missed.
The pipeline is coming to West
Virginia . Sure they are having public relations
meetings and talking to landowners like we have a choice, but we know it's a
done deal because they are already piling pipes. You can fight it. You can refuse to sell,
but you know your neighbor would sell
his soul for a pack of bologna and a candy bar so the company will just
take the pipeline around your place. The best thing to do is agree, take the
money, and do whatever the hell you want as soon as Landman isn't looking.
Our ancestors came to the mountains
because "decent people" sent us into exile for simple things like
playing with witchcraft or trying to kill the king. They thought the mountains
would eat us up, but we have the ability to survive like wood roaches (a bug that isn't as dirty as his
cockroach brother, apparently. If there is a roach in the kitchen, Mama looks
at it and says, "Oh! Okay! He's just a wood roach! They come in a time or
two when the seasons change. Don't mean we're dirty!" Then she doesn't
flip out as much.)
We survived because of
intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity, but we are a culture of rebels.
There's the idea: "If someone is
dumb enough to show me they are going to take my land one way or the other and
then offers money, I'm going to take it. I'll heed the restrictions for a day
or two, but it's still my land. I do what I want."
Landman will come knocking and
offering $45 per foot of your land they are wanting to purchase for the pipeline.
Snap up that deal. Take the money. There are about six companies wanting to put
in pipelines so if more than one company offers money, take their money too. So
what if you have a small pipeline city under your place? It's the companies'
job to figure that out. Take the money.
They are going to tell you a bunch
of restrictions. One article said you can't put as much as a lawn chair over
top of the pipeline. Another said you shouldn't build near it. But this is the
state of "Mountaineers are always free...so hold my beer and watch
this" (the second part just didn't translate well into Latin). As soon as Landman
leaves, we will all go back to doing whatever the hell we want, as it was from
the beginning. They can't monitor us forever. And just like every population we
have those that lack impulse control and anger management skills.
In the grocery store, you will hear
common statements such as:
"You cain't tell me not to
garden or barbecue or make meth or go muddin' on my own place!"
"If I get mad at my neighbor,
all I gotta do is dig up the pipeline next to his house, climb in my tree
stand, and shoot it with my AK. None-a
that old Hatfield and McCoy shootin' and yellin' bullshit. And once-TUH (pronounced
once-TUH) that blows, Landman won't know what happened. Me and the neighbor
will both get beau coups of money from the gas company just like those folks
did when that tanker train exploded near-at old Indian village, which by the
way, the railroad shouldn't have been cutting through with 18 explosive
cars..."
"You cain't tell me I cain't
moonshine on my own property! And you cain't tell Granny she cain't can outside
on the Coleman stove when it gets too hot in the kitchen!"
I predict death and disaster from
this pipeline, but it's coming one way or another. There will be a large number
of body parts of meth makers hanging in trees. Pigs will be blown to bacon.
Snake handlin' churches from here to Kentucky
can't save us from this. Bubby is not going to stop muddin', drinkin', and
buldin' campfires just because there's a pipeline underneath him. We can tell
him, but he won't listen. This is the land of that'll-learn-him mentality.
"Let him blow up a meth lab on
that pipeline. That'll learn him!"
We can warn the younger
generations. "Kids! Y'all know Uncle Bubby only has one leg, half an arm,
and one eye because he was playin' on that pipeline, and it s'ploded. We done
told y'all to stop once-TUH!" (And before someone tries to say I'm using
Uncle Bubby to imply that we are inbred up here, let me explain that some folks
use Bubby (or Sissy) as a first name, and then Bubby grew up and became an
uncle, which is a mur-acle from heaven after what happened to him with that
pipeline.
There's a good chance meth-makers
are going to blow themselves up anyway. People are going to shoot each other
with AK's anyway. Trump sold us to China
so the air quality is going to be toxic anyway. Stream banks will erode and
flooding is going to increase because the pipeline is coming anyway. Might as
well take the money. It may be the only
green we have left.
